It was a good day to be a duck

By Maureen Gilmer, Riley Children’s Health senior writer, mgilmer1@iuhealth.org

As the rain fell outside, rubber ducks floated into the Riley Outpatient Center by the thousands today, thanks to a donation from a patient, his family and their community.

Well, mostly these ducks came in boxes, but they are destined to float in patient tubs and be used in therapy and play sessions very soon.

Tristan Abbott, 13, and his mom, Sherry Harp, of Chandler, Indiana, have been collecting little yellow, red, blue and green ducks for the past couple of months to donate to the Riley Cheer Guild for distribution to units with young patients. But these are not just ducks of different colors. There are Disney ducks, Minecraft ducks, tiger ducks, little police ducks and just about any kind of themed duck you could imagine.

The duck collection came about from a conversation Tristan had with a nurse on the burn unit at Riley Hospital for Children, but more on that in a minute.

Tristan became a Riley patient earlier this year after what his mom first thought was a simple sinus infection took an aggressive turn, moving into the teen’s brain.

It’s a tough story, she said, one that she is just now able to tell without crying.

Despite multiple trips to doctors closer to their southern Indiana home, it wasn’t until Tristan was transferred to Riley that he received the care he needed, his mom said.

And not a moment too soon.

“They told us if we had waited one more day, he would have been gone,” Harp said, still unable to believe how quickly a relatively simple condition morphed into a life-or-death situation.

The middle-school student and baseball player was diagnosed with orbital cellulitis, a rare and serious bacterial infection of the tissues within the eye socket, often caused by a sinus infection that spreads to the eye area. Symptoms can include pain, swelling, redness and a bulging eye, as well as fever and impaired eye movement. If left untreated, orbital cellulitis can lead to blindness or other serious complications.

Tristan’s symptoms started back in January when he came home from school complaining about something in his eye, then he developed a bad headache. Eye drops and pain medication didn’t help. The next day he woke up with his left eye swollen shut.

Trips to urgent care and an ophthalmologist followed, and Harp and her husband, Greg, were advised to take Tristan to the emergency room, where physicians eventually arranged for him to be moved to Riley in Indianapolis.

“They told us he had orbital cellulitis and if it reaches the brain, it can be deadly,” Harp recalled.

The Riley medical team, which included neurosurgeon Dr. Thomas Larrew, otolaryngologist Dr. Lauren Sowa and ophthalmologist Dr. Keegan Mechels, as well as infectious disease specialists, quickly mapped out a care plan, which would eventually require three tricky surgeries to remove the infection.

During that time, burn unit nurse Chris Swift developed a connection with Tristan, and the two began talking about Jeeps and the custom of “Jeep ducking” (where Jeep owners leave rubber ducks on other Jeeps) that began several years ago.

The burn unit and other units at Riley go through a lot of rubber ducks, and they’re not just for babies, Riley Cheer Guild director Ann Hannan said.

“Kids who are on the burn unit for burn injuries have to go through dressing changes and burn debridement,” Hannan explained. “They do that in the tub room, so when they have items that can float (like ducks) in the tubs, it’s a great distraction from the pain. We also use them for imaginative play with younger kids – we make up stories and songs.”

And because they’re cute and small, they are fun to hold and can be used like a stress ball, she said. Riley police officers occasionally have “police ducks” that they can hand out to young patients who seem particularly anxious during a visit.

Because Harp felt indebted to Riley, she decided to seek duck donations in her community, thinking she might get about 200. But she ended up with 3,200 ducks for Tuesday’s delivery.

She and her husband, along with Tristan and his brother Sebastian, made the long trip from home to Riley and dropped off boxes and boxes of ducks as a donation to the Riley Cheer Guild.

“Riley saved my son,” Harp said, “so It’s near and dear to me.”

Tristan, who has healed and is back in school, hopes to return to the baseball diamond in the fall. Today, he was on point for the delivery mission – decked out in a brain surgery T-shirt and duck-decorated shorts. He wears glasses now because he lost some vision in his left eye, but he said he feels good.

His mom is counting the family’s blessings.

“Had it not been for God sending us to Riley and having amazing doctors there, we could have lost him. Everybody there is just amazing.”

Learn more about donating to the Riley Cheer Guild at rileycheerguild.org/wishlist